So very sleepy. But what else is new?
At least my long dessert-free period will be over soon. Patient readers will recall that I didn’t get to do my usual Sunday shopping last week because Joe’s car had a flat tire and so we didn’t go anywhere.
Then I ordered groceries online from Sav-on, only to have a bunch of stuff not show up.
:Like most of my sugar free cookie order.
So I haven’t had my usual sugar free cookies since Wednesday afternoon, and let me tell you, it’s been rough.
I even considered doing a whole new Sav-On order just to get my desserts, but the minimum order is $40, and that’s a lot of cookies.
I really miss my little indulgences at the end of each meal. Pleasure is important and I have really missed my treats.
Luckily, as far as I know, Joe’s car is fine as we will be shopping like usual tonight, and I will finally get my frigging cookies et al.
And life will be sweet again.
Otherwise, life has been video games. As usual.
Finished with my incarnation as a Bosmer (wood elf) archer. That was fun. Got to be all badass with crossbows, which is always a plus, because I love crossbows.
They are so damn cool! Like everything that is cool about bows combined with everything that is cook about guns.
They even go ka-chick like a shotgun!
And I forced myself to keep playing till I got to level 30 and had 300 exhibits in my Legacy of the Dragonborn museum.
Usually I start getting the urge to start over as a different character build around level 25 and don’t make it to level 30.
What can I say, I get bored fighting and exploring the same way for so long.
But I am trying to be a tad less twitchy. After all, you don’t know what happens next unless you stick around to find out.
To wit, I am going to stick with my current incarnation, a human necromancer, at least until I get to level 40.
Seeing as the mod I am centering this playthrough around only starts at level 30 and is notoriously labor intensive, I will probably go way further than that.
I look forward do it. I’ve done the mod, Undeath, once before and it is a crazy amount of work and quite hard. In that sense,it’s crazy that I am doing it again.
But what the hell.I need more challenge in my life. Obstacles to overcome, pitfalls to avoid, crazy situations to somehow survive.
Ideally, this would come from actually doing something productive, but baby steps.
Some day, these cage bars will dissolve, and I will be free,
Until then, I have my games.
More after the break.
Depression is a luxury
I know that sounds awful. Let me explain.
Depression is a luxury only in the sense that it is only possible because in themodern world we are so divorced from the struggle for survival that we can “afford” to be depressed and do nothing and live in quiet despair.
If the situation was such that it was get up and do things or die, depressives like myself would find their motivation eventually. The human brain only gives us the luxury of depression when all out basic needs are met.
When they are not, a much older and more powerful part of our brains takes over we feel as hungry or thirsty or tired or whatever enough to fix the situation.
Despair is also a luxury. You can see that in the super happy and hopeful songs from the Great Depression (ha).
Back then, the whole world was so dark and terrible place that despair was no longer an options. You had to grab on to whatever hope and joy and inspiration you could find because the alternative was to lay down and die.
And we’re seeing something similar now. We live in dark and desperate times when it seems like the shadows have grown darker and hopes dimmer than any other point in the lifetimes of people alive today.
And people are responding by making videos where increasing numbers of people. each in their own little Zoom window, sing songs of hope and inspiration because god damn it, that’s what we all need right now.
Now is not the time for depressing music about depression. And I say that as someone who tends to gravitate to it.
Here’s my fave recent example :
And from way way closer to home (literally), my cousin Dale and friends!
This is what the world needs : hope, togetherness, the sense that we are in this together, that the fundamentals of humanity are still here for us, and the message, unspoken, that we will get through all this together.
And it gets me thinking about my own depression. It makes me wonder if I might be a happier and healthier person if my life had been harder. Hard enough so that I, too, had needed to find my hope and strength in order to beat back the darkness before it consumed me for reals.
Instead, I have languished in the doldrums of a sad but easy life. My survival has never been threatened. I have lived off others for my entire adult life. I have never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. I have never had to choose between bills or rent. I have never had to fight to survive.
So I am “free” to play video games all day getting absolutely nowhere in life. I had my pilot light snuffed when my parents took me out of university. All that boundless optimism that gets people moving when they are young died, and it’s still dead.
There is nothing to galvanize me into motion but my own weak self.
And I am working on it. Some day. I will finally bang the rocks together hard enoughto create a spark and get me moving again.
Because I don’t have to be that sad and forsaken little boy any more.
I can grow up. I can be a man. I can be a real person.
I can find the strength to grow again.
it just takes a little time.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.